Dartmouth Traditions

"Lest the old traditions fail." A place to reminisce about how Dartmouth used to be before things started slip-sliding away. (Alums are welcome to add to this collection with their own rememberances ... E-mail me at muser@tiac.net and I'll post them. Comments are moderated and, usually, only comments WITH YOUR REAL NAME will be allowed.)

Sunday, August 13, 2017

Here is a nice well-researched piece on the former tradition of "senior canes" by Joe Asch ... see: Dartblog Entry. I confess ignorance on this subject and am glad to see this history lesson. Joe has done a thorough and nostalgic job on another vanished Dartmouth tradition.

Perhaps things might have gone better if we had been tagged the Dartmouth Native Americans?

Saturday, June 03, 2017

Another Dartmouth tradition is about to be deep sixed ... the requirement that students be able to swim 50 yards to graduate ... see: Dartblog Entry. It appears that many snowflakes must melt when they hit water. Traditions are disappearing faster on the Hanover plain than they are being created. That makes for a bland four years. So sad.

Saturday, June 04, 2016

What is it about Dartmouth that it can't maintain traditions? We find out now that one more tradition is too burdensome to continue ... and that is for the President of the College to hand out diplomas at the graduation ceremony ... see: No Diplomas from Phil. In a few years time I suppose graduating seniors will watch this once joyous rite only on virtual-reality YouTube and receive a facsimile of their diplomas via e-mail?

Monday, November 16, 2015

Please read in detail about what recently happened at Dartmouth College where a group of black students went on a rampage denouncing their white classmates with profane vitriol ... see: Campus Reform Story. Now, as an exercise in turnaround is fair play, imagine that this was a demonstration of white students at Howard University ... and replace the chanted word "white" with "black" and you will see racism in its purest and ugliest form.

Yes, these black-student protesters at Dartmouth clearly do not have fully-formed senses of social consciousness ... and probably will eventually live to regret their impetuousness. But they nevertheless put a KKK stamp on their repulsive actions that will quietly resonate in the ivied halls of Hanover.

I do however doubt that the administration there will have the gumption to give them their due ... rather taking the attitude so prevalent these days that "blacks will be blacks." But, to me, lack of push-back against such disgusting demonstrations only makes matters worse ... giving these miscreants a sense of what they did was sanctioned and even encouraged. This is exactly the wrong message from a college that should know better.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Can Dartmouth sink any lower? For a rarity at the college on the hill, a conservative was invited to speak to the undergraduates. Apparently the college Republicans had invited Rick Perry, outgoing governor of Texas, to speak at an open event and he drew a number of anal-sex questions from the audience ... some of which were printed on a flyer that was passed out by a sophomoric sophomore, Ben Packer. A typical example was, "Do you [Rick Perry] dislike bootysex because the peeny goes in where the poopy comes out?"

Another green weenie in the audience, senior Emily Sellers, asked the governor if he might engage in anal sex for a large campaign contribution. Wow … such disrespect from seemingly liberal artists! And freshman, Timothy Messen, snidely queried if Rick Perry thought that homosexuals were equivalent to alcoholics. Obviously not everyone in the audience was so crass, but to read more of the details of this sour event see: Breitbart Story.

Because of a recent similarly scatological story coming out of Harvard ... see: UK Daily Mail Story, and an overwhelming vote of the Dartmouth faculty to abolish fraternities and sororities, I was commenting to my wife that college professors must live in a parallel universe ... and she agreed. They must have dispatched pedagogical space ships to bring some of their more naively insipid students along with them.

Obviously, the Dartmouth administration cannot and should not punish these miscreant students like it once attempted to stifle campus conservatives for "vexatious" speech. But it surely would be appropriate to embarrass them (and a few of the more notorious faculty members) in some public way.

Monday, April 07, 2014

Cowed

The new president of Dartmouth College, Phil Hanlon was recently initiated into the ways of hyphenated student protests when the“Concerned Asian, Black, Latin@, Native, Undocumented, Queer, and Differently-Abled students” aka, Freedom Budget (a name as nutty as these students), recently occupied his office with a list of 72 demands … which apparently include some knee-slappers. For instance they insisted that Dartmouth must include one "queer studies" class in every department (such as “Queer Projective Geometry” and “Queer Inorganic Chemistry”). I say “apparently,” because I started doing research, trying to find their full list of 72, but then said to myself, “why should I indulge these children with my efforts? Isn’t this protest just an infantile cry for attention … which they clearly don’t deserve?” So I didn’t.

Anyhow, this was not a shining moment for Dartmouth’s pixy prexy … a Dartmouth-graduated math major like myself. He did not literally kick these militant students out of his office and have them sent to Coventry. Instead he and his Dean of the College, Charlotte Johnson, pampered these wing-nuts with negotiations and then let some of them bivouac in his office for 48 hours. How humiliating for him and for Dartmouth College … not a shining start for his new presidency. If you want to read more on this tempest in a teapot see the following from the Wall Street Journal.

I think that the real lesson to be drawn from this disruption … and other recent travesties … like the forced resignation of Mozilla’s CEO, Brendan Eich, for a single political donation (see:Information Week Story) … is that acceding to the irrational demands of those hyphenated groups only makes matters worse. Arthur Miller had it right when he compared the McCarthy era to the Salem witch trials in his play, "The Crucible." There are times when an illogical fervor grabs a society’s psyche and, if nobody pushes back, can result in very scary consequences. The unwillingness of us (I’m talking about you and me, friend … and President Hanlon) to push back against such blatant silliness only causes more silliness … and eventually, if not checked by some courageous souls, much more dire consequences.

My suggestion to Dartmouth’s Phil Hanlon is don’t be cowed … do your best to purge your campus of such “diverse” detritus and start emphasizing a new diversity … a diversity of true liberal (small “L”) thought. Encourage rational and studied debate on any subject … but do not pamper the childish confrontations and loopy demands of any hyphenated radicals. It’s pretty easy to tell the difference.

Afterthought: Some might say that all this carping on my part is easy since I do not have to deal with a self-perpetuating and incestuous Board of Trustees who might deny me my next budget request. True, but then, if those in lofty positions are not willing to stand on principle, then their imagined positions are really not that lofty after all.